1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus that manages image processing apparatuses by processing packets received therefrom, and relates to a control method and a storage medium for the information processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent office environments, image processing apparatuses or other network-connected devices are generally managed and controlled by application software running on a network-connected information processing apparatus.
To manage network-connected devices and jobs running thereon by an information processing apparatus, there has been proposed a technique for assigning in advance identification IDs to the devices and utilizing event notifications transmitted from these devices to the information processing apparatus (see, e.g., Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-317087). It has been also known to identify network-connected devices based on their IP addresses, which are information for identification of network nodes.
With network-connected devices becoming more diversified, IPv4 (which is a conventionally used version of Internet protocol) poses the problem of IP address exhaustion and other problems, and IPv6 becomes widely used to eliminate these problems.
Since IPv6 allows one network interface to have multiple IP addresses, an address selection rule called longest match is defined in RFC (Request for Comments) 3484. The longest match rule is to select an address having a longest prefix length from among transmission source IP addresses.
To identify network-connected devices based on IPv6 addresses, it is however necessary for application software to know in advance IP addresses of the devices. If IP addresses of a transmission source of a received packet are unknown, the information processing apparatus cannot determine the device from which the packet has been transmitted and is hence unable to correctly process the packet.
In order to identify devices, identification IDs of the devices can be provided aside from IP addresses, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-317087. In that case, however, since packets transmitted from the devices to the information processing apparatus must each contain a corresponding identification ID, a problem is posed that existing devices and existing packet structures cannot be used without modifications, and processing at the devices and the packet structures must be modified.